I imagine someone else here must have thought about this before...
At the U.T. club station, we have two tables full of radio gear - one
with the HF station and the other with the VHF/UHF weak signal station. At
the moment, our only contest logging PC we have is sitting at the HF table,
but I would like to get another PC for the VHF table as well. Now, we only
have one TNC/radio combination for packet clustering. I would like to be able
to use the packet gear on either machine. I know we could fire up a copy of
TR on each machine, run a two computer network, and be able to get to the
packet that way... But, that's kind of cumbersome, especially since (possibly
with the exception of Field Day) we're very unlikely to be actually using both
machines for logging in the same contest.
So, one way to do this is to put in a manual switch box on the serial line
so only one computer is connected to the TNC at a time. But, my ideal
situation is that if and when either or both machines are on, they can get to
the TNC; the keystrokes of one machine get echoed on both machines, and the
incoming traffic appears on both machines as well. And of course, if only one
machine is on, it works just like you would expect. This would be both
interesting for the off-time contest operators and visitors to check out the
cluster traffic and maybe work on strategy, and it would make for one less
switch box to deal with in casual day-to-day DXing and grid-chasing.
So, the question is, can one create a serial Y-cable that supports this?
If you just Y off each of the 25 lines will it likely work? Do you need
diodes in certain of the lines to make sure things go the right direction?
Would it matter if one leg of the Y is longer than the other? Or is it just
infeasible?
--
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Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin Amateur Radio Callsign: KM5FA
Department of the Computer Sciences President, UT Amateur Radio Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of the Linux Laptop Home Page
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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